Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith and I am once again joined by Bruce Hillman and Adam Francisco. We're following up last week's episode that ended up being about demons instead of angels and demons. So we only got you the bad spiritual beings last week and this week. Better to close on the positive. I suppose. This week we're going to talk about angels. I suppose it's kind of a ridiculous question, given that they show up in the scripture to ask something, like, to have the main question be like something, are angels real? That's. That's kind of a dumb question just for a survey of this, but we might cover some questions like, do I have a guardian angel? Do I become an angel when I die? You know, this is kind of. What's the one where every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings? Wonderful life, you know, the kind of popular depictions of angels. What do we actually know about angels? I've been liking this kind of phrasing too. What does Christian theology have to say about angels? What is the bare minimum? What is the sort of, is there a creedal or confessional minimum that we have to say about angels? And then beyond that, what can we say? And then what's just pure speculation? So before we do that, just remind everybody that the thinking fellows is part of a broader podcast network of shows. In fact, part of a broader network of media. Over@1517.org, you can go find all of our podcasts there. We also have blogs coming out daily. We have Preaching helps. You can go to 1517 on YouTube and you can see that we post multiple videos a week, some short and topical, some conference video, some longer, like article recaps and things like that. So you can go subscribe there as well. Check that out. 15:17 on YouTube and 15:17. Okay, guys, so why don't we start with that? I think important one, what is the minimum? Like, what do Christians have to say about angels? Or what really should we say that meets sort of like an enough category?
B (2:49)
Well, they absolutely exist. They are part of God's creation. The word angel means messenger. So that gives you at least what some of them. Their kind of main task is. They proclaim things in the New Testament a lot, Gabriel, or in the Old Testament, they come down and they give news. That seems to be one of their main roles. At least with the angels that visit Earth. There's other angels, though. There's like a hierarchy of angels. That's also a minimum. That's they say hierarchy of angels and of course, in the Middle Ages, they actually put them on a true hierarchy of, like, this one's more important than others. And that inference isn't totally crazy because you do get things like archangels, which implies a hierarchy of angels. And you have, like, seraphim, you have powers, you have thrones, you have dominions. So there seems to be all these different types of angels. Some of them are, you know, know, delivering plagues on Earth. Some of them are bringing good news and messages to God's people. Some of them are fighting spiritual warfare. Some of them are up in heaven around God's throne. So I think the minimum is, is they are part of God's heavenly economy that he uses to accomplish his will on Earth. But of course, I kind of want.
